More than four decades ago, the American singer known simply as Melanie (surname Safka, rhyming with “Dafka” — which is kind of relevant to this column) created and widely performed a great song called, Look What They’ve Done To My Song, Ma.
My theme here echoes Melanie’s sentiments, with the slight alteration of “My” to “Our” and “Song” to “So”. What I am saying is: Look What They’ve Done To Our So, Ma. For, as the word “so” is turning day by day into a meaningless utterance, its wealth of real and potential meanings is being lost, including those that flow from what could justly be called “the Jewish so”.
For about a hundred years now, “so” has been threaded through Anglo-Jewish discourse as an anglicised version of the Yiddish “nu” and is regularly interlinked with it — So? Nu?
It has enlivened spoken English by giving it an expressive verbal shrug: What’s happening? And a means of urging somebody on: Are you just going to stand there, or what? Or a sarcastic rejoinder: You think I care? So many are the nuanced (or nu-anced) meanings implicit in that one little word.
But now, “so” is no longer a question but an answer. Not a proper, revealing answer but a mere preface to an answer. The interrogative Jewish infusion that has added flavour to a simple English word, is being drained away. Or, as Melanie sang about her song’s fate, “they’ve put it in a plastic bag and turned it upside down.”
Not that long ago, on radio and television news programmes, when the presenter in the studio cut to the reporter in the field to ask for an update — “What are those Israelis up to now, Jeremy?” Or, perhaps, “Lyse, can you tell us the latest about the rumours that Ken Livingstone is going to live on a kibbutz?” — the reporter would respond by saying: “Well…” which is a considered, reflective term indicating that the reporter is weighing up the matter carefully and thoughtfully before answering.
Now, by contrast, reporters respond: “So!” Which is calculated to leave a very different impression. The reporter is indicating that things are moving rapidly along and that he or she is on the case, moving along with them. We live in a world in which reflection and contemplation are no longer valued as highly as they once were. Now, our news is constant, quick, disposable; our conversation lacking imagination and leaning towards infantile conformism. Tempora mutantur, as the Yiddish saying has it.
Rather like the use of the phrase, “I’m good,” in reply to polite enquiries about one’s health, which I must confess makes my spine tingle (not in a good way) when uttered by somebody over 50, the modern over-use of “so” appears to be unstoppable.
It has eclipsed the recent, rather endearing, usage for exaggerated emphasis, as in “I sooooh do not want to go to that wedding”, “this chicken soup is sooooh delicious”. Or, in a lower key: “You are soooh Moneysupermarket” — incidentally the most complained about TV ad for the past two years running.
The new and relentless reliance on “so” as a conversational prop is something akin to the verbal tics of yesteryear’s inarticulates, as in those painful interviews with footballers who would say “y’know” every other sentence.
But “so” has spread far beyond such exchanges. Just listen to how many people structure their conversations as an agenda or menu of small points, each introduced by “So…”
Unlike “Omigod”, or the ubiquitous “like”, which is scattered at random through all kinds of speech, the newly spreading “so” is not confined to young people. Nor to any particular class or level of education. You can even hear academics on Melvyn Bragg’s highbrow In Our Time discussions on Radio 4 using it — repeatedly, even — to introduce their erudite points.
The decline of the “Jewish so”, with its intonation borrowed from “nu”, is happening more or less in sync with the rise of the automatic “so,” what Lenny Bruce would surely categorise as the “Goyish so”. Just like the transmission of actual words, like shlep or chutzpah, Yiddish inflection and gesture has enriched English.
And I’m sure that there are people who have grown up believing that “so”, like “aggravation” and “already”, is actually a Yiddish word.
And that’s what makes it so sad. Bad enough that “so” as meaningless reflex has reached epidemic proportions, but it has done this at the expense of a piece of Jewish linguistic fertility — oy gevalt!
Yes, Ma, look what they’ve done to our “so”.
